Thread for discussing this year's budget.
As yet I haven't really had a chance to have a proper look at it. For the most part, as expected, it seems to be a bit of a piss of no one kind of budget. WIth an election coming up, handouts and tax cuts predominate. There's also been an enormous spend on infrastructure, which probably borrows from the Victorian playbook if anything.
The government is making a lot of the fact that the budget is in surplus again. This is untrue. It's projected to be in surplus next year; they've actually delivered a deficit. We ought to be very sceptical about this, as Joe Hockey and Wayne Swan both promised surpluses that never eventuated. It also misses the point that under this government we've amassed Australia's highest level of debt in history, sitting at about half a trillion dollarydoos.
What are your initial thoughts?